Final Review Photos

Final Statement

My current work is inspired by the ancient and ongoing art of storytelling. Through story telling, whether through family stories, stories shared between friends, or even the voyeuristic approach of “eaves dropping” inspiration for a new piece can be born. Storytelling is a practice that can be seen all over the world, dating back to ancient times. People have been telling stories as a means to keep alive tradition, tell of ancestors and family, create societal rules and practices, and to simply just remember past events, whether personal or historical.

In my work I am looking to explore the transient concept of story- telling. I have created a piece with both a visual narrative, as well as a spoken word component. Through the various methods of image making done in the medium of collage, I am asking the viewer to interpret each individual block as a moment in time. Through these small synapses, the piece will create the opportunity for each viewer to build a sequence of events and an accompanying narrative for the next viewer. Each small block collage serves as a moveable part to represent the sequence of events interpreted by the viewer. I am interested in watching the evolution of the piece visually, aesthetically and conceptually with the coming and going of different participants. The movement throughout the existence of the work is a metaphor for the ever-changing vocal history that comes with a told story.

By including the element of sound, I am hoping to build not only a visual representation of a story told and retold, but also a recorded narrative. The recorded sound component is meant to give the audience the opportunity to voice their visual story in the form of vocal poetry. Hearing the voice of the previous participant gives the current viewer/participant the chance for a glimpse into a moment passed. With that, allowing the participant the choice to build off of that moment and continue, or erase it completely.

With the way in which the work is installed, I am interested seeing how the aesthetic and objectness of the blocks influences the incentive for the audience member to become a participant. Each block being hung on its individual hook allows for the participant to have the intimate experience of holding and redistributing the blocks of moments as they see fit and then continuing the experience by creating a recorded narrative and imprinting their voice to the moment that they created. The act of interacting with the work is just as important as the work itself. The participants and audience breathe life into the piece by contributing their own verse, whether physically with the movement of the blocks, or vocally with the recorded retelling of the moment they have created.

Ning!

I have created an online community based on mindfulness, meditation, and overall leading a peaceful existence.  I hope to gather a group of like-minded individuals willing to share their day-to-day experiences, tips on meditation, art-making, and advice.

http://quietmind.ning.com/

From watching ASPECT: early works volume 8, I was most interested in the work of Tony Oursler.  Oursler's "Spinout" was the featured video.  The video explores the feeling of a loss of control.  Throughout the video, an array of different fears are presented.  The tone used in the video with both audio and visual affects reinforces the eerie feeling.  Naturally, the generative topic that seemed most appropriate and versatile is "fear."

To start off my research, I wanted to find an accurate definition of the word fear.  Dictionary.com provided this as a definition: 

fear

    [feer]  Show IPA

–noun

1.	a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.

2.	a specific instance of or propensity for such a feeling: an abnormal fear of heights.

3.	concern or anxiety; solicitude: a fear for someone's safety.

4.	reverential awe, esp. toward God.

5.	that which causes a feeling of being afraid; that of which a person is afraid: Cancer is a common fear.

From the word "fear" I was then interested in comparing the difference between "fear" and "phobia."  Dictionary.com provided this as the definition of "phobia":

pho⋅bi⋅a

    [foh-bee-uh]  Show IPA

–noun

a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.

Origin: 
1780–90; extracted from nouns ending in -phobia 

Synonyms:
aversion, hatred.

Next, I wanted to investigate what the most common fears were.  An interesting aside to this would be to survey people and see how often your friends fears fit in to the most common fears.  Another exercise could be compiling a list of the weirdest fears.  Working to categorize these fears and find similarities, differences, and reasons for these fears.

http://www.inspiredmoneymaker.com/2008/04/23/14-most-common-fears-in-life-and-what-to-do-about-them/

This is an art project that I came across, dealing with fears and presenting students with the challenge of "drawing a feeling."  I thought that this would be an interesting activity because it would force the students to think of their fears in a non-linear pattern.  Instead of drawing a literal translation of their fears, they are asked to choose their material, colors, and techniques in a way that represents their fear.

http://www.humanityquest.com/topic/art_activities/DrawFeeling/index.asp?theme1=fear

The second lesson plan that I found to correspond with the generative topic of fear involved creating a mask of what fear looks like.  This could become an interesting project in that some masks could come off quite literally, as something that is scary.  Other masks may be hiding what fear is. 

http://www.humanityquest.com/topic/art_activities/exercise15/index.asp?theme1=fear

Generative Topic

While discussing our personal projects in class last week we compared the different ways in which we each interpreted the perameters of the topic.  Although all of our projects were very different in style and medium The major similarity that we came across is that we all chose to work in traditional medium.  This seemed to be an interesting finding since the work being completed was designed to meet the standards of a class on "new media."  With this thought in mind, we began to dissect this phenomenon and ask ourselves a few questions as a group.  First of all, what kept us from moving in to the world of new media?  What makes us afraid to work in a more digital or technical way with our artwork when we use it for so many other parts of our life (ex. communication, networking, information processing etc.) Are there any overlaps between old & new media?  When does new media turn in to old media?

Art is an ever-evolving movement, with new mediums and techniques always on the horizon.  I think that this new way of working is just another new era in the art-making world that will eventually turn in to just another genre.  The new media era of work is remeniscient of some of the big changes that happened during the the Fluxus, Dada, and Neo-Dada movements.  Each of these movements were new at the time, and something looked at with a skeptical eyes.  Each were something new and different, conveying radical ideas in a way that is unfamiliar.  The biggest similarity between these older genres and today's new media to me is the way in which they aim to involve the audience.  These older genres all aimed to give the audience a sort of exeperience.  Instead of having the audience merely view the work, they wanted the audience to take away something unique.  I think that new media art work in many ways is similar to this.  Much of new media art is based giving the work the ability to reach a wide variety of people in an easily accessible way.  This far-reaching style, experiential and interactive by nature, creates a sense of community amongst those viewing and participating.   In many ways, new media artwork demands the attention and participation of it's viewers.  Even if we, as a group, are not new media artists, we are participating in the new media era by viewing the work and living in the society that we do, so driven by technology.  

http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus

http://the-artists.org/artist/yoko_ono.html

personal project

The work of Brian Knep as well as a few of the other web-artists that I stumbled across throughout my research process have inspired me to bring more awareness and compassion to the process of healing and growth through my artwork.  This idea is interesting to me because I feel that everyone craves this sort of understanding from other people, but rarely ever practice offering it.  I created a set woodcut prints showing the innate nurturing that comes from nature.  The two pieces, although identical in composition the contrasting colors bring across the message of growth.  The all over composition of the print was meant to bring comfort in to the confined space.  The geometric shapes that make up the tree branches and trunk create an inconsistent pattern.  Each print has 3 seperate layers, which can be differentiated by the the different colors in each print.  Each of these layers was created on the same woodblock using the reduction method.

The YesMen

The Yes Men are a group of political satirical activists who are considered highly controversial by many.  It is hard to classify the ethics behind this group.  I think that the group as a whole has nothing but the best of intentions, but it is questionable whether or not their tactics are fully affective and morally acceptable. 

 

The Yes Men work by posing as well known corporations or political groups.  They create websites that closely mirror that of the original group but they change the content to create a parody on the actual intention of the group.  They take groups that they have personal or moral vendetta's against and have it appear as though the group has changed its viewpoint or made an apology for its actions.  The reason that this kind of behavior is ethically debatable to me is because the first step in the Yes Men's agenda is to spread false information since they group that they are imposturing does not actual feel that way.  The group in many cases, creates a false sense of hope for the people viewing their presentation.  Even with the initial medium of deceit that is implicated by the Yes Men, the major goal that they are trying to pursue is forcing the corrupt organization that they are impersonating in to changing their ways, by shining a spotlight on their faults.  What they Yes Men are doing is illegal, but they are very rarely prosecuted because it is hard to classify what crime they are actually committing. 

 With all of that being said, I think that by viewing their actions as performance art makes their work more morally acceptable.   As artists,although not direct the Yes Men are making a point in a very creative way.  The Yes Men have continuously made change through their artwork since their very first piece, by the sheer fact that they were able to get away with it.